Non-volatile memory systems, such as flash memory, have been widely adopted for use in consumer products. Flash memory may be found in different forms, for example in the form of a portable memory card that can be carried between host devices or as a solid state disk (SSD) embedded in a host device. Debugging and diagnostics may be run on the device for identifying errors. The diagnostic capabilities based on standard read and write commands may be limited as standard read and write commands may be encrypted by a host sub-system. This encrypted communication may prevent an application on the host side from communicating with the device. The host or an application on the host may need to either access the diagnostic information or to perform debug or diagnostic procedures for the device. It may be problematic to require specific signatures for a write command to signal to the device controller that it is not a standard write command but a special diagnostic command requesting an error log. Multiple layers of encryption (e.g. in mobile device operating systems) may prevent the sending of diagnostic commands to a storage device.